Man charged with computer porn said he was participating in sexual roleplay

June 19, 2012|By Karla Bowsher, Sun Sentinel

The prosecution and the defense rested their rested their cases on Tuesday in the trial of a Coral Springs man charged with computer pornography and child exploitation and with traveling to meet a minor to commit an unlawful sex act, both felonies.

Charles Berkman, 28, was also charged with possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana, which he intended to smoke with the female he expected to meet for "casual sex," Berkman testified on Tuesday.

But "she" turned out to be a "he."

When Berkman arrived on Aug. 1, 2011, for the sexual rendezvous he'd arranged, he was greeted by a Boca Raton Police Department detective who promptly arrested him.

The "female" with whom Berkman had been communicating online since July 26 was actually undercover detective Charles Ramos of the Boynton Beach Police Department.

Ramos is a part of the South Florida Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, whose members investigate online exploitation of children in multiple jurisdictions.

On July 26, Ramos pretended to be a 15-year-old girl and responded to a Craigslist ad that Berkman had placed to solicit casual sex. The two communicated via emails, text messages and instant messages, in which Berkman detailed explicit sex acts he wanted to perform with the female, according to Ramos' arrest report.

Their communications included discussion of what Ramos and defense attorneys called Berkman's "school girl fetish." This sexual fantasy was also discussed by Ramos and Berkman when they took the witness stand on Tuesday, the second day of trial.

Berkman testified, however, that he defines the fantasy as an adult dressing as a schoolgirl in a short-skirt uniform, rather than a fantasy about an actual underage schoolgirl. Berkman said he thought he was communicating with a woman in her early 20s who was pretending to be a 15-year-old girl in the name of sexual role play.

"It's a fantasy world," Berkman said of the Internet and particularly Craigslist. "Everyone lies about everything. No one tells the truth about their age or their height or their appearance, and so you never really know who you're talking to, and that was the case here."

Berkman told Palm Beach County Assistant State Attorney Gregory Schiller that he had previously met with Craigslist users who were as old as "late 40s, early 50s" and who included men dressed as women.

Berkman also testified that he thought he was arrested for only a drug-related matter. In addition to a bag of marijuana, he had a candy bar and lollipops laced with marijuana in his car when he was arrested, according to the arrest report.

Berkman admitted to Schilller, however, that about three-fourths of his 30-minute, post-arrest interview with Detective Ramos was about his online relationship with the supposed 15-year-old.